I’ve been using Gmail for domains for seven months for Project Red Stripe and it’s been a bit like the beginnings of a romance. First of all, every day you find something great about it that you didn’t know before. Then every week.

And then this….

You can create pseudo addresses. What’s that you ask?

Well it means that you can sign up to services with unique e-mail addresses so that any mail from them still comes into your mailbox. BUT, you now know where any sold-on addresses came from (using Gmail’s filters).

So, in the case of my projectrestripe.com account:

mike+spamfromprsblogpostprojectredstripe.com (obviously swap the for @)

will also get to me, but if the address gets harvested I will know where it came from. Now, I’m sure that pretty soon services will start to defeat this, but for now it’s fantastic.

See Aaron Lynch’s blog entry for the lowdown.

I was trying to think of a smart title for this post, but gave up because it doesn’t need one - Google Maps is already smart enough.

Earlier on in our project I asked each of the team to create a map showing where we’d been as a team since the project had started. My aim was to show that there were different ways of describing the same thing and that there wasn’t necessarily a right or wrong way.

The first suprise I got was that half of the team interpreted the exercise as needing to show where we had been geographically and the other half as where we had been mentally as a team. Anyway.

Stew created a map showing the physical places that we had visited using Google Maps. And although Stew is always very enthusiastic about how easy technology is (”It’ll take me a day to do that”), I reckon he took longer to make his map (get an API, create a web page, write some HTML, re-write some HTML, upload the web page etc., etc.) than I did to create this morning. It took me 10 minutes (yes, really) to create four markers with a bit of HTML and to create a line from our offices to the cafe in the nearby park.

This was made possible (not that I haven’t gone through the whole rigmarole of creating one before!) by the release of the functionality on Goole Maps at the beginning of April. Included in My Maps is the ability to add create a KML file from any data that you’ve added using My Maps. What this means is that in one step any map that you create using My Maps is available as an overlay on Google Earth (you just need somewhere to store the KML file so that other people can use it). What Google has done here is, at a stroke, made is so simple to create maps that anyone can do it and so add another raft of customers that they can monetise.

Even before My Maps was released, Google has been slowly adding features to Google Maps. In February, outlines of buildings appeared on maps for some cities in the US and in April these became nearly three dimensional (click on The Economist Group (New York) on the ), as reported by Google Maps Mania. At the same time, some buildings got names and train and subway stops appeared (I have to say that the previous lack of these on UK maps makes Google Maps far inferior to StreetMap as a way of finding your way around and they still don’t show up outside central London).

I guess the question now is, how far will Google go? Will they risk incurring the wrath of other commercial organisations by adding data at a more granular level or leave it to people to do their own thing, like the excellent subway map on onNYTurf (go to the highest zoom level on a station in Manhattan to see what I mean)?

Way out! I can see the exits (they’re the small red steps)

In the background, meanwhile, some other neat things have started to creep in, such as the undocumented ability to zoom in a bit more when at the highest zoom level when in Satellite View as noted by Google Blogscoped.

I guess that only time will tell whether Google will someday own the Earth (or at least a virtual representation of it)….

Let’s start with the good news: We’re pretty close to making a decision about what service to bring to market. It took many long, sometimes heated debates, and in the end, Javier, our team coach had to play tiebreaker.

The bad news is that we have also decided, for the moment, not to make the choice public. We are aware, of course, that we are thereby going back on our promise to be open. But going public now would almost certainly kill our idea. The concept will not be easy to pull off in any case, in terms of developing an impressive website. But it also involves building relationships with several constituencies, both within The Economist Group and outside it.

What we can say, however, is that the core of our product will be a social network. It will also feature aspects of other ideas, such as data visualization, mash-ups and, perhaps, some user-generated content. Essentially, we’re bundling several web technologies into an online service that we hope you want to part of.

While we develop something that is presentable, we will blog about the ideas that we considered implementing, but ultimately chose not to (which doesn’t mean that other units of The Economist Group may not themselves decide to take them up). So stay tuned.

The eighth (and last) in the series on the ideas we received

“C’mon, this is obvious. Social networking site for subscribers to The Economist”, writes Vinay Gupta, in response to our invitation for idea submissions. Yet even though social networks are all the rage online, we did not receive many submissions suggesting we take this route. One has to wonder why.

Perhaps it is because The Economist Group’s various businesses are primarily regarded as old-style “mainstream media”. Nonetheless it is clear that a sense of community, of shared interest and passion for this “newspaper” does already exist amongst Economist readers. How often is it that a faint smile of recognition or camaraderie sneaks across your face when you, as an Economist reader, see a fellow commuter reading The Economist on the morning train on the way to work? Surely this sense of shared values could be readily built upon within the online environment.

What, then, would an Economist social network look like? It makes sense to start by defining social networking and giving a few examples of existing sites. Offline the term refers to “a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of relations, such as financial exchange, friendship, hate…”, to quote Wikipedia. Online, it is pretty much the same thing, with the interaction is mostly driven by commenting on and sharing photos, music, videos and blogs.

The “purest” examples of the social networking site are the likes of MySpace and . They attract huge numbers of users: MySpace is the third, Facebook the sixth-most popular site in the US, with 106m and 18m members respectively (for more information see this recent study by Jupiter Research). These sites are open to anyone to join. They allow users to set up a personal profile and then allow the user to tap into an existing network within the service, further expanding personal connections by interacting with others profiled on the site.

Then there are business-oriented social networks, most notably . Billed as “a place to find and leverage professional opportunities”, it is essentially a contact network and mainly used to find or to list jobs. Users in search of a new position, for instance, usually update their resumee and check whether any of their existing contacts could introduce them to a company’s hiring manager. In contrast to MySpace and Facebook, however, there are rules of engagement. Contacting another user requires either a pre-existing relationship or the intervention of a third user who is already linked to the previous two. Such an arrangement is intended to build trust among the service’s users.

Still, even in the case of LinkedIn with its 9m members, the question arises as to how effective and sustainable a community of this size can be (many users, for instance, are just lurkers - see chart above). It is for this reason that I, like some others, believe the future of social networking sites will belong to niche networks. The “space” (web speak for “market”) seems to be moving in this direction: sites that let users build their own network (such as Ning), have a local focus (Tribe, which was recently acquired by Cisco) and are established around more specific areas of interest (snowvision.com) are gaining momentum.

Yet the best example for an exclusive social network is aSmallWorld, an invitation-only community for the global jetset. It was founded by Erik Wachtmeister, a former investment banker and the son of a Swedish ambassador to the US, who saw the need for connecting a very affluent community of international jet setters. It is purported to include and Ivana Trump in its membership.

To the nearly 130,000 members of aSW, as they call it, the site is mostly a social channel. They use it to hook up with fellow members when visiting a new city, ask what social events or venues to look out for, as well as making their luxury holiday homes available to peers. Think of this network as an online version of the high-end crowd you would expect to gather in places such as Saint Tropez or Monaco.

Predictably, aSW’s rules of engagement strongly illustrate one of the key challenges of social networks: ensuring a suitable interaction between members. To keep the mob out, invitations can only be issued by certain key members of the community (in fact, if the person you invited misbehaves, this will refelect badly on you: “We expect members to be accountable for people they invite into aSmallWorld”, it says in the site’s FAQ’s).

There are plenty of rules the violation of which can make you end up in “aBigWorld”, an online penetentary of sorts: inappropriate language in one of the discussion forums, virtual pestering and if too many of your invitations to fellow members to join your network of friends get rejected or ignored (even in this exclusive online world, trying to get too close to Paris Hilton will get you in trouble). Anyone annoyed by another member can click on one of the omnipresent “abuse” buttons.

“What actions can a webmaster implement to sort out a troublemaker?
The webmasters’ powers are impressive and ubiquitous. But so too are their compassion and understanding. Webmasters can send a warning to a member, clip privileges to invite new members or connect with other members, clip the ability to participate in the forum, send to exile in aBigWorld, or terminate a member’s account.”

(from the aSmallWorld FAQs)

An Economist social network could certainly do without such Orwellian rules. Still, the model I envisage would be closer to aSW than MySpace, FaceBook or even LinkedIn. The Economist, because of its issue-focused and critical content is already a platform of common interest for its readers. As “Free Exchange” (a blog on Economist.com) and “Inbox” (where all letters to the editor are published, except for the abusive ones, that is) demonstrate, there is much potential for lively interaction between Economist readers.

Yet interesting debates are only one type of “content” that a community of readers could “generate” (to stick with the trade’s terminology). Like aSW, an Economist social network could allow readers to hook up, be it online or offline (during the next trip to San Francisco, for instance), as well as helping each other find the best hotels and restaurants (think of user-generated Economist Cities Guides). Members could even help Economist journalists do research (like Assignment Zero, an experiment in pro-am journalism), or use the network as platform to mobilize for action on offline projects and issues (after all, the Economist was founded 1843 in opposition to the protectionist Corn Laws).

So a social network for Economist subscribers is indeed quite obvious. Perhaps even so obvious that it would not be very innovative for Project Red Stripe to create one – since The Economist is likely to soon start integrating all kinds of community features in its website anyway.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, we would like to thank all those who have contributed suggestions related to social networks.)

The sixth in a series on the ideas we received

We’ve been well impressed with the ideas that we have received. While many people sent in short ‘thoughts’, others made a great effort to write clear and concise descriptions of their ideas. Again, we felt that there would be many Web 2.0 ideas submitted and we did get a fair number of ideas about comments, mash-ups and tagging.

Augmento (an internet alias) felt that many people discuss Economist articles and in other discussion forums and that by not allowing our readers to comment on articles we are losing our community and potential ad dollars. Yes, we don’t have comments on our articles on Economist.com but I would point Augmento in the direction of Democracy in America and Free Exchange where we are engaging readers in discussion.

Andy Morrall suggests that we could collate comments/letters to the editor into a digest which could then be published as its own article. Andy suggests one topic which would have benefited from a digest of letters to the editor: our article about Bush and Kyoto.

Lee Mauger wrote in to suggest that we partner with to “provide Economist analysis within the Google Earth environment”. Lee suggests that this economic and political analysis would work well with traditional travel guides about countries and cities. Having been seconded from the Economist Intelligence Unit, I’m a big believer in this idea. I must admit that I always bring along the most recent Country Report (or, for Viewswire subscribers, the one-click report) anytime I am visiting a new place. Okay, at US$525/country report, it’s slightly more expensive than your average travel guide but perhaps the EIU could offer a product which would work with Google Earth. The EIU covers 200 countries so you would be hard pressed to find an area of the world that we don’t cover. Presenting information from the EIU and The Economist in a visual mash-up with Google Earth is a very tempting idea.

One reader, who describes himself as a “former political staffer”, wrote in to suggest that we “let interest groups and ordinary citizens mark up legislation before it goes to the floor of Congress”. I can see this idea working wiki-style and being applied to legislation in any country, and perhaps other important documents like trade agreements, , and strongly-worded documents. It also fits in very nicely with two lesser known brands of The Economist Group: European Voice and Roll Call. Victor Kostyuk wrote it to suggest that we “take the informativeness of Wikipedia, social organization of , comment rating systems of Slashdot and , and mix it all with an overarching flexibility to add meta-content of one’s choice to every piece of the world wide web”. I’m using Firefox which enables me to that have been posted about particular web pages on different blogs. If you have the plug-in and are using Firefox, if you click on the link above for manifestos (or even for the Firefox site itself) you’ll find that there are numerous comments related to the content on that page.

And finally, Bob suggests that we link human and machine resources to The Economist. The Economist already brings readers together for conferences and through our own , Corporate Network. But we certainly don’t tap the unused cycles of readers’ computers. Bob reminds us that we “should not underestimate trust that subscribers have in The Economist”. In return for tapping users’ computers, Bob suggests that The Economist would allow early access to its research and stories for those who are part of the network. Not a bad business model but, as Bob reminds us, “your lawyers will have to work out liability”.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, we would like to thank all those who have contributed suggestions related to comments, mash-ups and tagging.)

I suspect that this is a one day only offer.

There are some pre-requisites:

• Windows XP/Vista (Mac and Linux support coming soon)
• Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Firefox 1.5+ with the Google Toolbar
• Round-front or elongated toilet providing at least 1.0 gallons per flush
• Use of automatic toilet bowl cleaners is not recommended

Here are some screen shots, (just in case it’s not there tomorrow!). Click to enlarge.

Intro

Installation

How it works

The third in a series on the ideas we received

Undoubtedly one of the key challenges in today’s world is managing the ever growing information tsunami. Accessing and creating huge quantities of information is easy, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is the problem. A significant number of responses from our idea collection drive challenged The Economist to present a solution.

Enthusiastic readers of The Economist often hail the publication as their primary trusted source of global news and analysis. While they may read traditional newspapers daily, either in print or online, their weekly issue of The Economist provides the aggregation of the most important issues of that week plus analysis and opinion. In our idea collection, many contributors suggested expanding The Economist’s service of “trusted advisor and overseer” and applying it to information available online.

There was strong support among idea contributors for The Economist to become the “gateway” or “sorter” of a wider body of information beyond that purely generated by itself. Colin Henderson wrote: “I trust the Economist, I trust the content, I trust their analysis and their predictions. But I get all the rest of the information from the internet sorted through Google…..I need a trusted source…that assimilates all the news and information, assesses it, within my personal context and presents it to me.”

Many internet users are already taking advantage of using and “readers” (such as ) to streamline their online information intake, but this is often based on the user having previously visited a site and having chosen to receive the information feeds from it. Colin’s proposal suggests The Economist becomes the user’s primary respected source which also trawls the internet on the user’s behalf delivering content it feels is most appropriate based on The Economist’s assessment of value, reliability and news-worthiness.

“It learns from me as I read”, Collin adds. This type of benefit can, to some extent, be achieved with community feedback, as suggested by Earl Killian. With the ability to rate articles and add comments before sharing one’s reading with one’s friends, you build a communal system of receiving information which is most likely to meet your fields of interest. and currently allow this type of interaction with their “tagging” and “posting to friends” functionality. In one of our brainstroming sessions we also came up with the thought of somehow collecting data of our subscribers’ surfing behaviour to compile lists, such as “The Economist’s reader’s favorite websites” and “what other readers of this article have read”. Sites like and Last.fm - go some way to carrying out this type of action.

Iain Wicking was on the same train of thought with his proposal suggesting readers could set up specific preferences of their interests, to guide the delivery of preferred information. As Iain notes, “the issue is not the quantity of information but the difficulty of finding, making use of and sharing relevant information”.

An Economist Intelligence Unit colleague suggested exploring the application of tools which show the interrelationships between concepts, as a possible solution. Such services can ease information overload or highlight information clusters. Dann Anthony Maurno suggested a point’n'click globe: Economist data and analysis overlaid on allowing the reader to scan the globe and zero in on a location of interest to access the relevant country and regional data. Reuters have a Beta version of a map that does something similar (see below). Alternatively, one could move the mouse over a timeline which tells you about major events by time and a keyword.

Such developments look like they could be implemented by primarily using new and developing technology, but another contributor, Jing (who doesn’t want us to publish the surname), points out that “people still like an editorial staff to screen for quality and relevance”. Its this kind of thinking that suggests to me that the traditional role of publisher could move from their managing their own-produced content to managing a “standard”. Jing’s idea was more specifically related to consolidating and summarising the blogosphere, but the principle could be applied to other online content: that a respected source like The Economist could present for its readers the dominant viewpoints, showcase the various views for debate and even link to wider related event coverage, including multi-lingual reporting.

Shannon Bauman is supportive of a similar concept of multi-level news access, further proposing this to be available as a mobile, audio version allowing one to delve deeper, or skip and skim the various articles as suits one’s requirements.

The Economist and other publishers of much loved media are in the very fortunate position that they already provide their readership a service for which they are often well regarded and respected. Rather than sounding the death knell of such media, the internet may, by its own complicated nature, provide the new direction by which such media can flourish in the future: as the font of all knowledge, in your chosen publisher’s colour.

(In addition to those mentioned in this post, thank you to all those who have contributed suggestions relating to managing information.)

What are they doing other than visiting watering holes on Fleet Street or putting themselves through emotionally draining team-building exercises? Readers of this blog may be excused for asking this question. After all, the postings here have been somewhat “navel gazing”, as Mike put it kindly.

But don’t worry, we’ve been working hard on other things as well. And we will now write more about them.

We are currently spending much of our time developing a process to gather ideas from the outside world. So expect to shortly see a “call for ideas” here. To cast our net widely, we’ll also e-mail it, for instance, to readers of The Economist, post it in the blogosphere and do some advertising. Why are we doing this? Because we think that we don’t have all the answers.

It is hard to predict how many ideas we’ll receive. So the other main item on our to-do list is to come up with a robust mechanism to sift and analyse the submissions.

We sure hope that such openness and our processes are innovative in themselves. But if you know of companies that have gone down a similar path to come up with something innovative on the web, please let us know.

As a team with the task of coming up with something truly innovative on the web, we couldn’t help having a look at a new service provided by Yahoo called “Pipes”. After all, Tim O’Reilly of Web 2.0 fame has called it “a milestone in the history of the internet”.

Although Pipes is still showing its youth, we do agree. For the first time, a service lets even less-techy souls build their own “mashups” — combining several data feeds to create a new one.

In this simple example, I have taken articles from Economist.com’s news analysis section and pushed their headlines through the search function of , a community picture site.

The result is not very impressive: just some seemingly random pictures. But it could be improved by combining them with the articles (though I haven’t yet figured out whether this is possible).

So why are we interested? Because Pipes is likely to again demonstrate the one approach that really works on the internet: give people easy to use tools – and they will come up with great new things.

The annual AOP event had keynotes from Carolyn McCall of Guardian Media Group and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly and Web 2.0 fame.

if you’re scared of screwing up you’ll get nowhere

McCall outlined five challenges:

• brands and people (it’s key that you know what’s being said about your brand online)
• community (although she insisted on calling her readers users, she highlighted the need for a two way dioalogue)
• innovate (”if you’re scared of screwing up you’ll get nowhere” and “you can’t suffocate it by judging it on normal rates of return”)
• excel at software development (”having the best developers is as important as having the best journalists”)
• drive digital revenue growth

She prefaced these by saying that she’d thought of a sixth - vision. She cited GMG’s attempts to make a go of a UK version of Wired magazine as the point (in 1994) when some of the (now) senior people at GMG were first exposed to new media. This experience had stood them in good stead.

Now I call that luck rather than vision, but I take her point.

I’ve discussed her point about software developers (I’m sure that she’s include all technologists) with some people in the past and although she was backed up by other speakers, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. You need the vision to use a framework for people to work in. If it’s there, then talented developers can certainly make a difference, but they need to be given that freedom and like the relationship between a website and its readers there needs to be a two way dialogue.

Tim O’Reilly took this point one step further by talking about “computer programming as journalism”. His theme was all around community and he outlined ways to foster this:

• get volunteers (as in a wiki)
• use self-interest (as CraigsList does)
• architect for participation (design for network effects like flickr does by defaulting to public access)

His computer programming as journalism thought relates to Chris Anderson’s long tail theory - the point he was making was that with all your content in a database somewhere it’s the ability to get at it in a super-easy way that will make the difference. I’d say it’s more like computer programming as sub-editing, but I guess that wouldn’t get as much attention.

Of the other speakers Tim Weller of Incisive made a great point when asked about sites that he likes. Speaking about the Telegraph’s navigation he seemed to be thinking out loud when he said “creativity is good, but plaigarism is quicker”.

Not suprisingly, he also said that vertical search would be big for media organisations like his.

PaidContent.org has more coverage.